Following Form: Judy Cooke

Judy Cooke’s exhibition Following Form is the artist’s seventeenth solo show with Elizabeth Leach Gallery. Exploring the notion of what a painting can be remains a central concern for Cooke, and her insistence on drawing our attention to the sides of her panels makes us realize that the experience of a painting is far more than pictorial. Her work refers quite specifically to its surrounding architectural conditions and our physical relationship to them. 

Nods to the Russian Constructivist, Suprematist, and certain Post-Minimalist such as Imi Knoebel, Robert Mangold, and even Elizabeth Murray are hard to ignore. These influences flutter and echo amongst the work, but Cooke’s brand of Formalism is uniquely her own and has been for over five decades. Having come from a background of printmaking and graphic art, Cooke has been developing an abstract language that both expands and subverts the tenets of Minimalism in the most joyful of ways while simultaneously paying tribute to them. Unexpected shapes and materials such as rubber are again utilized and rhyme beautifully in their naked and contorted way when abutted against her signature, raw woodworks. Though her paintings can appear at times austere, they have a hidden humor and tenderness that’s unlocked when closely studied.

Sculpted wooden panels with glyph-like markings playfully argue with the irregular shapes of their substrates. Color frequently somersaults into kaleidoscopic arrangements; sometimes, it remains stoic and straight. Cooke’s ability to choreograph a beautiful collision of painterly and sculptural gestures is the work of a mind that refuses to accept any one genre or tradition and prefers to find a more plural definition of how an artist manifests her practice while submitting fresh new ideas about abstraction.